The War in 2020

program. While carrier battle groups paid port calls around the world and stealth bombers flew patrols over Nevada, infantrymen cut their way through the jungles of Latin America with machetes and fought bitterly and successfully against the better-armed bands of the drug billionaires. When the Army had been ordered to Zaire, its tactical equipment proved to be, at best, a generation behind that developed by the Japanese — much of which had been based on technology initially developed in the United States in support of strategic space defenses.

The XVIII Airborne Corps fought hard, but the South Africans never dropped the initiative. The Japanese battle electronics proved impenetrable to the U.S. systems, while the lack of well-trained intelligence analysts left the Military Intelligence elements with nothing but useless equipment. The South Africans, however, always seemed to know where the U.S. forces were located and what their weaknesses were. The Japanese suite of electronic countermeasures and countercountermeasures would keep the U.S. forces deaf and blind, then the Toshiba gunships would sweep in, followed by strikes employing more conventional aircraft and fuel-air explosives.

U.S. casualties mounted so quickly, with such apparent helplessness on the U.S. side, that the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, after long-range consultation with the President, requested a ceasefire.

The South Africans ignored him and continued their strikes on the U.S. columns attempting to make their way northward to an imagined safety.

Finally, the corps commander attempted to surrender all remaining U.S. Army elements in Shaba in order to prevent the further loss of life.

The South African response was to strike a fifty-mile- long U.S. Army column with improved napalm.

The President ordered the U.S.S. Reagan, the nation's newest ballistic missile submarine, to strike Pretoria from its station in the Indian Ocean.

Taylor finally raised the U.S. embassy in Kinshasa on shortwave from an upriver station, only to be told that his case did not rate special evacuation consideration, given the general conditions in the country. He would have to make his own way for another thousand miles down the Zaire River.

He rode on asthmatic steamers where the crew shoveled the dead over the side at oar's length, and whose captains continued to work the channels and currents only in the hope that the next river port would be the one where the epidemic had already burned itself out and passed on. On one dying boat Taylor opened the rickety latrine door to find a corpse resting over the open hole, pants down and pockets turned inside out. Another night, he had to sit awake through the darkness, pistol in hand, to ward off the sick who insisted on sharing the magic medicine that kept the white man alive. And it truly was as though he were possessed of some remarkable power, so easily did he pass among the dead and dying, untainted except by the smell of his own filth. He began to suspect that he had some natural immunity, and, by the time he reached Kinshasa, that belief, along with a ragged uniform, dog tags, a half-empty pistol, and a folded-up, sweat-stained red and white cavalry guidon, was all he possessed.

Kinshasa, his goal, his city of dreams, proved to be the worst part of the entire journey. He had expected to be welcomed back into the safe, civilized, white fold, to be whisked away at last from this dying country. But as he approached the U.S. embassy compound, a bearded shambles of a man, the Marine guards in protective suits lowered their weapons in his direction. Stand back. Do not touch the gate. Taylor's rage eventually drew a Marine officer from the chancellery, but he only closed to shouting distance. He declared that, if Taylor truly was a U.S. serviceman, he should make his way to the U.S. armed forces liaison office at the military airfield. If everything was in order he would be evacuated to the quarantine station in the Azores. Almost all of the surviving U.S. personnel were gone now, withdrawn under the cover of the ceasefire that was the only positive result of the strike on Pretoria.

Taylor, hating the man, nonetheless craved information. About the war, about his world, about comrades and country. But the Marine officer was anxious to break off the discussion and go back inside.

Upriver the disease had created an atmosphere of resignation, a sense that the epidemic was the will of the gods, that there was nowhere to hide. For all the wails and songs of mourning, the dying out in the bush had a quiet about it. But in Kinshasa's motley attempt at civilization, the plague seemed to further distort and corrupt. Penniless, Taylor made his way across the urban landscape on foot, newly afraid now that he had come so close to rescue, forcing himself to go on. None of the few vehicles in the streets would pause to give a stranger a lift, and they drove with their windows sealed despite the torrid heat. Men and women came out into the streets to die, fleeing the premature darkness of their hovels or the broken elegance of colonial mansions. On the Zairean skin, the marks of the disease showed purple-black on the newly dead, but ashen as acid burns on those fortunate enough to live. And, despite the ravages of the epidemic, a fierce life persisted in the city. Howling children robbed the dead and dying, inventing new games in the alleys, and silken masks had come into fashion for those disfigured by the disease. Upriver, women waiting to die in way stations had made desultory overtures, but here, in the capital, brightly veiled prostitutes called out musically, playfully, threateningly. Shanty barrooms and cafes still did a noisy trade, and passing by their human froth, Taylor was glad that he looked so poor that he was hardly worth killing. After all he had seen, it struck him as all too logical that he might be killed now, at the end of his long journey. He felt that he was cheating his fate with each corner safely passed.

His most persistent vision of Kinshasa remained the public coupling of a big man with a woman in a red silk mask. The two of them leaned up against a doorway in a garbage-strewn alley. With no change in rhythm, the man turned his head and eyed the passing stranger with the disinterested expression of a dog.

* * *

'Yes, sir,' the old master sergeant had said to him, as he guided Taylor through the disinfectant showers at the Kinshasa airfield processing detachment, 'you're looking a little the worse for wear. But we'll fix you up.'

The hot jets of the shower felt as though they were barely reaching his skin through the accumulated filth. The master sergeant had placed all of Taylor's uniform remnants in a dangerous-waste container. He had wanted to dispose of the matted cavalry pennant, as well. But the sudden look in Taylor's face, perhaps touched with just a bit of jungle madness, perhaps a look like the one his face had worn in the instant before he killed the bandit and the bartender upriver, had persuaded the other man to provide Taylor a special bag and receipt form that promised the item would be sterilized and returned to him.

'I suppose it's one hell of a mess up-country,' the master sergeant said in a voice loud enough to reach into the shower stall with Taylor.

Taylor found it too hard to talk just yet. But the NCO went on, perhaps sensing a need in the half-crazed officer who had just walked in out of the bush, or perhaps because he was the kind of NCO who simply liked to talk — about wars and women and life's infinite small annoyances. He seemed wonderfully familiar to Taylor, a cursing, grunting, eternally weary symbol of Home. Taylor wanted to respond with words of his own. But it was very hard. It was much easier just to let the disinfectant-laced water stream down over him.

'It's a hellhole, I'll tell you,' the sergeant continued. 'Captain, I was in Colombia, from ninety-seven to ninety-nine, and I deployed to Bolivia a couple of times. But I never seen a mess like this place. They ought to just give it back to the Indians.'

'I… was in Colombia,' Taylor said, testing his vocal cords.

'Yeah? With who? I was with the Seventh Infantry Division. You know, 'Too light to fight' and all. Jeez, what a clusterfuck.'

'I was with the Sixty-fourth Aviation Brigade.' Taylor's hands trembled helplessly as he struggled to manipulate the big bar of soap under the torrents of water.

'Oh, yeah. Them guys. Yeah. Maybe you gave me a lift sometime.'

'I was flying gunships.'

'You were lucky. I hate to tell you what it was like humping up them jungle mountains. Christ, how we used to curse you guys. If you don't mind me saying. The chopper jockeys would be lifting off again before our butts cleared the doors. Of course, that's nothing to what the Navy done when the shit hit the fan with the South Africans.'

'What's that?'

'You didn't hear, sir? Yeah, well. I guess you were out in the woods. As soon as the casualties started piling up— especially, the RD victims — that old carrier battle group that was sitting off the coast just unassed the area. Protecting and preserving the force, they called it. What it amounted to was that they weren't about to load any sick grunts onto their precious boats. But, I mean, what the hell? The only reason the Air Force is still flying us out